Anxiety

Everyone experiences anxiety in one form or another, but to varying degrees. Although anxiety is a normal part of life, in excess it can range from uncomfortable to debilitating. Anxiety can show up as worry, stress, fear, insomnia, and physical tension. Usually it involves some concern about the future. For some people anxiety is specific and dependent on certain circumstances. For example, anxiety may arise in social settings, during medical procedures, or in public speaking. For others whose anxiety is more generalized they may worry about almost everything, with or without a reason. There is a range of treatments for anxiety. Some take medications, the most effective of which can be habit-forming and hard to stop using. Other treatments include Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which helps people challenge the beliefs that are the root causes of anxiety.

In treating anxiety, Stephen integrates cognitive behavioral therapy and other psychotherapeutic techniques with mind-body approaches such as mindfulness, breath retraining, yoga and hypnotherapy. In his experience as well as in the research evidence, this tends to be a highly effective approach to reduce symptoms in both the immediate and long term. Once you learn how to calm your own nervous system, you will feel not only relief from symptoms, but empowered because you were the one that did it. This is how the process helps make it easier to address anxiety's underlying causes so that symptoms are less likely to re-emerge. Clients entering Stephen’s office in an anxious state, consistently leave more relaxed that they were before.